Collaboration in the Cloud Gets Richer with Presentations Added to Google Docs

AnnouncementSeptember 17, 2007

As part of its ongoing efforts to enable users to take advantage of the web for sharing and collaborating, Google today added features for presentations to the Google Docs application. At documents.google.com, users can create simple web-based presentations that others can update and view from their own computers, even at the same time. The presentation feature of Google Docs is also available to businesses, schools and organizations using Google Apps to offer communication and collaboration tools to their users.

Presentations are a natural addition for Google Docs, as they are usually created with the intention of being shared. Web-based, collaborative presentations offer users much-needed relief from manually managing and compiling group members’ input in separate attachments, and they make it possible for multiple users to view a set of slides while a moderator controls the presentation. Users will see that these features are still in simple, early stages; the Google Docs team is making them available today in response to strong user demand for presentation-sharing, and updates and improvements will continue to roll out over the coming months.

Google Docs is an innovative, web-based platform for creating, sharing, storing, and publishing documents; it now includes capabilities for word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations.

Starting today, users can:

Create and keep presentations in one place on the web that’s accessible anytime, from any Internet connected computer.

Manage, update and share presentations with colleagues by sending them a simple email invitation.

Edit together online and in real-time, or contribute at different times to the same presentation on the web.

Present and control slide shows for all viewers over the web, with no special setup required. Chat with viewers in real-time via integrated chat.

Import existing presentations to get started quickly.

Quickly publish presentations to the general public or individuals of their choice.

"This new presentation feature to Google Docs will be an extremely useful tool to our users and gives us an easy way to – literally – get on the same page," said Scott Smith, vice president, Envirolet Environmental Sanitation and Google Apps administrator for Sancor Industries. "In our business the better the process for sharing information is, the better we can illustrate to our customers the value of our products."

"From student groups to sales teams, people are turning to the web for help improving both personal and group productivity," said Sam Schillace, director of engineering, Google Docs. "Putting documents in the cloud surrounded by easy to use features for collaboration and sharing can save people hours of inefficiency and frustration and even enable new ways of working together."

Google Docs (the new, simpler name for what was called Google Docs & Spreadsheets) is available free at documents.google.com. Millions of people all over the world use it daily in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish, Czech, Ukrainian, Hungarian, Turkish, Polish, Russian, Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch, Traditional and Simplified Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, and Indonesian.